The Myth of Human Supremacy

by Derrick Jensen

  •••

  When I think of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, I think of the catastrophic consequences caused by members of this culture believing they’re able to control the natural world. I think of the United States Forest Service managing forests to death. I think of the United States National Marine Fisheries Services managing oceans to death. I think of the United States Corps of Engineers managing rivers to death. I think of the entire human supremacist managerial ethos of this culture, stealing and murdering its way across the earth, pretending it can steal from and murder complex natural communities without fucking them up. I think of members of this culture creating, then releasing, genetically modified organisms into the world. I think of members of this culture changing the weather. I think of this culture releasing poisons into the world, bathing it in endocrine disruptors, covering it with neurotoxins. I think of this culture creating plastics. I think of mountaintop removal.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  I think of this culture killing off passenger pigeons, Eskimo curlews, bison, pronghorn antelope, pollinators, whales, cod, seals, prairie dogs, keystone species, mother trees, mother grasses, mountains, prairies, rivers, forests, oceans. What could possibly go wrong? I think of articles I’m seeing now about the creation of mechanical “bees” to replace the pollinators this culture is murdering.

  What could possibly go wrong with any of this?

  I think of an article I saw just moments ago entitled “What If Mosquitoes Were Annihilated?” The article began by calling mosquitoes “Little. Annoying. Killing Machines.” It went downhill from there, mainly citing CEOs of two corporations dedicated to wiping out mosquitoes—well, actually the CEOs are dedicated to making money as they wipe out mosquitoes. The CEOs described how fabulous it would be to eradicate mosquitoes, if we could only overcome the technical challenges. I mean, we don’t really want to drain every wetland and denude every forest, do we? The real solution, according to them, is for their corporations to genetically modify mosquitoes to render them sterile, then release them into the wild. Then we can eradicate mosquitoes! And gosh, what could possibly go wrong? Well, not much, evidently. Or at least that’s what one of the CEOs reassures us. And how does he know that not much bad will happen? Because of the name, silly! Don’t you know that names humans give nonhumans determine the nonhumans’ roles and functions in the real world? And if humans determine the nonhumans have no roles, well, then, they have no roles! It’s naturalistic philosophy, dude! And etymology! As the CEO says, “To be honest, there isn’t much evidence that mosquitoes do much good. In fact the name, anopheles. Anopheles mosquitoes are the ones that [sic] spread malaria and the Greek origin of their name actually means, of little use.”92 There you have it. And just so you know that this CEO puts his (receipt of) money where his (lying) mouth is, his corporation has tried to release these genetically modified mosquitoes in Panama without doing any sort of risk assessment on what this could do to the local natural communities.93

  When I think of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, I think of the utter insanity, the megalomania, the narcissism, the sociopathology, of believing that you know better than the real world what is good for the real world.

  I think of this culture.

  And of course I think of naturalistic [sic] philosophy. I think of the belief that there is no true intelligence in nature, that the only true intelligence and true purpose and true function come from the truly brilliant minds of humans, of homo sapiens sapiens.

  When I think of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice I am filled with sorrow and rage and disgust at the arrogance of members of this culture, at their stupidity and selfishness, at their smugness as they murder the planet that is our only home.

  •••

  I have written more than twenty books trying to describe this culture’s destructiveness, in the perhaps vain hope that by pointing to and articulating some of the underpinnings of this destructiveness I might help give other people who, too, perceive this culture for what it is, the courage to also name this culture’s destructiveness, and then to individually and especially collectively act to stop this culture from murdering the planet.

  But the truth is that even after more than twenty books, after millions of words, I have still come nowhere close to plumbing the depths of this culture’s depravity, insanity, arrogance, or its urge to control and destroy, all masked in terms of its own moral and intellectual superiority. And I fear that the horrible disease of human supremacism is so infectious and so deeply held among so many members of this culture, that to the last this culture will continue trying to manage, trying to control, trying to steal, trying to murder, till the biosphere of the entire planet collapses. And even then the human supremacists will try to continue in their ways.

  The disease is that strong.

  •••

  Here is a beautiful thing. As you know, bacteria outnumber human cells in our bodies ten to one. So we need to gain bacteria somehow; they have to come from somewhere. How does this begin to happen? It used to be thought that the placenta is a sterile place, and that babies encounter their first bacteria in the birth canal, where they meet, among others, Lactobacillus johnsonii, who is a milk-digesting bacteria. Normally, not many of these bacteria live in the vagina, but during pregnancy the population of Lactobacillus johnsonii there greatly expands, so that during birth the child is literally covered with them. Some of these bacteria are ingested, and they give the child the ability to absorb the mother’s milk.

  That would be beautiful enough, but more recent research shows that the placenta probably isn’t sterile, but that instead, as one article puts it, the “placenta harbours a unique ecosystem of bacteria which may have a surprising origin—the mother’s mouth.”94 Evidently the bacteria “somehow” (to use the scientific term) make their way from her mouth through her bloodstream and then either into the baby’s bloodstream or into the baby’s mouth and then gut through amniotic fluid. But how does this happen? How do the bacteria make their way? What are the relationships between mother, bacteria, and child? Who is helping whom, and how?

  •••

  I’m sorry, do you want to tell me again that there is no true function in nature?

  •••

  Or let’s talk about snot. Like most of us, I guess, I haven’t, except during a bad cold, given snot very much thought. And when I have thought about it, I’ve always presumed snot was made up primarily of white blood cells who gave their lives to fight off whatever illness I happened to be enduring.

  But then I had a flight home canceled out of San Francisco, and had to spend a night in a hotel with not much to do, so more out of boredom than anything else I decided to put the internet to its highest and most important social use—and no, I don’t mean starting a flame war because someone somewhere on the internet has some ridiculous opinion that must be corrected right now—but instead looking up more or less random factoids. Yes, the internet as the ultimate source of bathroom reading material. Among the questions I typed into a search engine was, “What is snot?”

  And boy, am I glad I did. I learned that snot is extraordinary stuff. And I got the added bonus of finding out why so many kids eat their own boogers. It all came from a column called “Dear Science” in the Seattle weekly newspaper The Stranger: “Snot is your body’s best defense mechanism, a sticky moat of protection against invading bacteria, viruses, and fungi. When it comes to where your body is open to the outside world, snot (more properly, mucus) provides a barrier against these alien invaders. Mucus, chemically, is quite fascinating. Sugar chains are attached to a protein backbone in mucus cells [which helps me understand why some kids eat it: it’s a little bit sweet! Kids: try this at home! Preferably when your parents have formal company!], with the contraption released out into the open. These glycoprotein molecules rapidly and aggressively suck up water until they are plump, slick, and slimy [Plump, slick, slimy, and sweet: Yum! Sounds li
ke a slightly used gummy bear!]. To an invader, this is a nightmare to navigate: tangled chains of protein and sugar, with every nook and cranny crammed with water molecules. (Boogers are when these chains become ever more tangled, finally resulting in a rubbery ball of partially dried-out snot. Neat!) The body adds antimicrobial enzymes to this mix, which digest the invading organisms as they slowly attempt to chew through this barrier and reach the thin underlying lining of cells. As the outer layers of snot are eaten or rubbed away, new layers are forming underneath, creating a sort of treadmill of slime for invaders to run on. Hence, during an infection, our bodies tend to make more snot in an attempt to run the invaders out. Although the surplus of snot is not much fun when we’re sick, it’s better than the alternative. People with cystic fibrosis have a damaged chloride receptor, preventing them from properly filling their snot with water. Without the nice slick snot, people with the disease are subject to all sorts of terrible infections—particularly in their lungs. Snot turns colors as the defensive enzymes within ramp up to attack invaders. Many of the attacks involve charging up metal ions—turning them into nastily reactive bombs against the invaders. For example, green snot comes from iron-ramped-up white blood cells. The human mouth remains the champion of sepsis—containing the most bacteria per unit of any normally functioning body part by far, aside from perhaps the later stretches of the gut. This makes the mucus of the lungs all the more remarkable. Initially, the air entering the lungs is full of pathogens. As the air takes many twists and turns down to the delicate and vulnerable alveoli, one by one the pathogens get stuck in the sticky mucus lining the passages. By the time the air reaches the alveoli, it has been scrubbed; air at the very ends of the lung is sterile—free of bacteria. All together, the body makes about a liter of snot a day—probably a bit more in the average toddler.”95

  What did I learn during my enforced stay in San Francisco? I learned that snot is a brilliant and elegant—and evidently for some, tasty—way for bodies to fend off infection (and have you ever before read the words “snot,” “elegant,” and “tasty” in the same sentence?). It’s not crucial to the brilliance and elegance of this solution whether snot evolved over billions of years of random mutations, or because bodies have intelligence, or nature itself has intelligence, or, for that matter, if some god or gods are behind it. The point is that it’s a much better solution than I could have come up with, that’s for damn sure. The real point is, do you still want to say that there is no true function in nature?

  •••

  How you perceive the world affects how you behave in the world. If you perceive only human constructs as having meaning or function, then you will overvalue human constructs. And if you perceive nonhumans and their creations as not having meaning or function, then you will undervalue nonhumans and their creations. The same is obviously true for those who perceive the creations of males or whites as being more important than those of women or people of color.

  It is crucial for those who are destroying the planet to insist that nonhumans have no inherent and true functionality, because if species do not serve true functions, the larger communities they are part of won’t suffer when humans eradicate them. They seem to believe they can destroy the great schools of fish without harming oceans, clearcut forests without harming forests, dam rivers without harming rivers, and so on. Human supremacists are maintaining this belief even as they cause the planet to die. But that is never what is important to them; even life on earth matters less to them than their feeling of superiority. Life on earth doesn’t matter to them except as it affects their ability to maintain this way of life.

  •••

  Having grown up in the arid western United States, I’ve thought a lot about water rights, and how these rights to water are allocated. Generally it is through something called “prior appropriation,” also called the “Colorado Doctrine” after an 1872 Supreme Court ruling. In a nutshell, prior appropriation says that the first person (or economic entity) to use water from a river or other source for what is defined by this human supremacist culture as a “beneficial use” has the perpetual right to continue using that same amount of water for that same use. A phrase to describe it is, “First in time, first in right.” Anyone who comes along later can use some (or all) of the remaining water for the same or some other “beneficial use” provided the new user doesn’t impinge on the rights of those who came before. These rights then become property, and can be bought and sold like deeds or other markers of ownership. So let’s say a mining corporation is going to use a lot of water for some planned operation. And let’s also say that all the water rights to the river have already been claimed. The corporation couldn’t use the water from the river till it bought the rights to do so from enough owners of already-allocated rights.

  Why do I mention this? Because the definition of “beneficial use” ties right to that same old ridiculous naturalistic [sic] belief I’ve been hammering in this book: that the only true functionality is human functionality. “Beneficial uses” are generally defined as industrial, agricultural, and household uses. And the inclusion of “household uses” is a Trojan Horse, since more than 90 percent of all water used by “humans” is used for agriculture and industry, which means that “beneficial use” is for all practical purposes defined as industrial and (industrial) agricultural uses.

  There goes the world.

  Of course, any worldview that was not human supremacist, and that was not in thrall to industrialism and to a way of life that is killing the planet, would recognize that the first beings to have beneficially used water from rivers are the rivers themselves, and the fish who live in those rivers, and the forests who live with the rivers, and the oceans fed by those rivers, and so on. And the Indigenous humans who live by those rivers. Benefitting the real world, indeed benefitting anyone but members of this human supremacist culture, is not real benefit. It does not effectively exist.

  But how do these supremacists believe the rivers became so fecund in the first place? It was through the beneficial use of the water by the rivers themselves, and by other members of their communities.

  In the narcissistic worldview of the supremacists, the only benefits that really count are those accrued by the supremacists themselves. And so what the Colorado Doctrine means in practice is that the Colorado River no longer reaches the ocean. Nor does the Rio Grande. Nor do many other rivers the world over; this is what happens when you allocate 100 percent of a river to “beneficial uses”: there is no water left for the real world. Likewise, this all means that the Columbia has been turned into a series of reservoirs, with disastrous consequences for all of those—human and nonhuman—who have the real original claims on the water, and who truly put the water to “beneficial use.”

  •••

  The same doctrine applies not only to water. It is true of mineral deposits, where it’s finders keepers, everyone-devastated-by-the-mine weepers. It’s also basically the “doctrine of discovery,” where any colonial power gets to rationalize taking possession of—that is, stealing—anything it claims to discover. In every case, discovery by nonhumans or by Indigenous humans doesn’t count as discovery.

  Of course it doesn’t, because the only true functionality is industrial human functionality.

  •••

  Abusers often attempt to make their potential victims dependent upon them, so as to make these potential victims easier to exploit; a potential victim who is not dependent upon the abuser has more readily accessible choices, chances to get away. Even when the potential victim does have choices, it is crucial to the abuser to make it seem as though there are none.

  First among those whom the abuser must convince of the rightness of his abuse and exploitation is the abuser. How can he sustain his abusive behavior over the long term if he does not believe his power is deserved and righteous and necessary and used for the common good? How can he feel all of these things if he does not perceive
himself as superior to those he exploits? And how better to make himself feel superior to someone than to perceive this other as (and better, make this other) dependent upon him?

  And how better to convince himself that those he exploits are dependent upon him than by convincing himself that he is the bearer of true meaning and true function; that the lives, actions, and achievements of those he exploits have no inherent meaning or function?